Sea Stuck
by Lil Spiph
Summary: In an alternate universe where Eridan spent most of his life in the sea, he discovers a drowning Sollux and rescues him. In a world were Eridan leads a much more fortunate, sheltered life, how will their relationship turn out?
1. Chapter 1

Hi everyone! I'd just like to note that clams can indeed produce pearls (something I didn't know until writting this) but they look different from the ones you find in fresh water oyesters. There are also lots salt water oyesters and other such muluscs that produce pearls. Eridan gladly takes pearls from all of these, but he doesn't always like the way they taste. Also, this is the first fic that I've ever uploaded to this website, so I hope you enjoy it!

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The seadweller glided along the ocean floor, looking for more clams. Clams were Eridan's favorite snack, but more importantly, he wanted the pearls that he sometimes found in them. He'd been collecting them for quite some time, hoping to make a necklace for Feferi as a proposition of matespritship. He knew that her feelings for him where less red and more pale, but he was hoping the gift would be just thoughtful enough to change her mind.

As Eridan was about to crack open a newly found clam, he noticed a shadow passing over the coral nearby and readied his gun (which, for reasons we cannot explain, works perfectly well underwater) looking to the shimmering streaks of light that were the sea-filtered Alternian sun. What he saw there was not a shark or a whale or anything dangerous, in fact, it looked dead. He swam closer to the thing which was now settling further down into the water. Was it a dead dolphin? Eridan shuddered at the thought, but looked closer. No...no, it was a troll, and a landdweller at that!

Eridan had only ever met one landdweller in all 8 sweeps of his life, and he was not fond of him. The highblood made a habit of tossing his garbage into the sea by which he lived, which wasn't only disgusting, but dangerous for the trolls (and dolphins) who lived there. Eridan had marched himself up to the hive of the no-good, littering scum, ready to give him a piece of his mind. Instead, he immediately slipped on some kind of garbage (not a difficult task to accomplish considering the trolls hive was covered with the stuff) and landed in a pile of horns, underneath which was buried the land dweller clown. The troll proceeded to thrash and scream, and Eridan, too startled to react, was thrown across the room into the kitchen. All he remembered from that point on was a green pie coming towards his face. According to Feferi and several snickering witnesses, Eridan had been acting...peculiar...upon his return home.

Eridan supposed he should try to help the drowning landdweller. Maybe this one wasn't a hysterical, littering drug addict. He figured he'd never find out if he didn't save him. He darted towards the sinking body at a speed that only a seadweller could accomplish and looped an arm around his waist. He found that the troll was abnormally lithe, maybe even malnourished. He pressed his lips to the other trolls in an attempt to filter some air from his gills into the landdweller's mouth. It worked. Neat, he didn't know he could do that.

The troll didn't respond, but Eridan could tell that he was still alive (or at least very recently deceased) from his body heat. He took him to the surface, then looked around for some land to bring him to. These waters were pretty shallow, so it didn't take him long to spot a small island in the distance. Eridan looked down at his unconscious cargo. The troll boy had two sets of small, pointy horns and a surplus of teeth. He couldn't have been any older than Eridan himself. He wondered for a moment whether or not he should give him another breath of air before heading for the island. He didn't know how much good that would do, but he had a vague understanding of landdweller anatomy and he knew that the top priority was to get the water out of his lungs. He went for the island, reaching it in what seemed like less than a minute. He laid the troll boy down on the beach in a scene sickeningly reminiscent of that in a classic troll Disney movie. He pressed down on the trolls chest in the most appropriate manner possible given his sparse knowledge on drowning resuscitation, his only reference: troll Hollywood. He was surprised at how quickly spurts of water lept from the landdweller's mouth, and was stunned enough to hesitate for a moment before bringing his lips to the troll boy's mouth once more. He was greeted by the near immediate coughing and sputtering of the other troll, who then rolled over and vomited the remaining sea water onto the hot sand and coughed in agony for several minutes while Eridan stared, horrified and disgusted by the display.

Waiting for the land dweller to stop being disgusting gave Eridan some time to wonder how the hell a land dweller managed to get all the way out here when there was no boat in sight and live. How long had he been floating out there, anyway? Did he just become too exhausted to keep swimming and pass out just as Eridan had found him? These grotesque land dweller antics also gave Eridan time to realize that he had left the clam he had found behind. Damn. With his luck, it probably had the biggest pearl in the entire Alternian sea inside of it.


	2. Chapter 2

AN: Okay, so it took me awhile to remember how to put in an AN, so some of you might read this without hearing what I have to say about it. Which I'm sure you're just /devistated/ by, right? XD Anyway, This chapter had a LOT of drafts for not being very long, so please excuse the long wait. I wanted to make sure that the paragraphs written from each of their point of view didn't include the others name since they don't learn them until the end of the chapter. Plus my first draft was basically an outline with very little description or insight. There are a few funny little refferences that I'm sure you'll enjoy if you can catch them. I'm going to do my best to throw these little inside jokes in as much as possible because they please me like nothing else can when I catch them in things that I read. Overall, I'm pretty proud of this chapter. I did my best to give some good insight into each characters point of view. I'd like to thank my live-in girl friend/editor for having SUCH good grammer and being around often enough for me to pester her to fix my mistakes. Ahahahahaha, I'm such a lazzy bitch. Anyway, enjoy the chapter, and thanks to those of you who responded favorably to the first one. And if you didn't? Well, that's okay too. Happy reading!

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Sollux lay sprawled across the yellow sand, eyes closed, knowing someone was there but too tired to care or to suddenly change his mind and decide that he did. His body ached with weakness and strain and his stomach churned the unpacified acidic substance in protest. His lungs, recently voided of the salty, bitter water, burned like the sulfur in his blood. Sollux groaned, wondering why his weren't so eager to take note of the fact that they were no longer filled with liquid. He heard the sputtered babbling and fidgety foot steps of who he knew was probably a sea dweller. In spite of his agony, he made a mental note to thank him (at least it sounded like a him) for probably saving his life after he had regained his strength. Which was something Sollux felt like he might never do.

Eridan eventually calmed himself down and came closer to the lowblooded landdweller. The other troll decided this was reason enough to open an eye. His red one. Eridan blinked twice, then stood up straight, clearing his throat and looking away. He felt like saying something snide, but remembered his manners and decided he should probably inquire about the landdweller's well being.

"Are you...alright?" Eridan asked awkwardly, not used to expressing concern for those so much lower on the blood hierarchy.

Sollux glared at him.

"Are you 2eriiou2ly a2kiing me that riight now? Of course II'm not fuckiing alriight. What a 2tupiid que2tiion."

Sollux's lisp often made it difficult for people to take him seriously. Although _difficult_ is an excessively kind way of putting it considering most people made no attempt to look past this quirk. At the moment he was letting his hunger and fatigue speak for him, irritation instantly causing him to forget his plans to thank the other troll. He figured it wouldn't matter anyway considering the seadweller would probably be too amused by his lisp to care.

Eridan frowned. So much for being nice.

"So sorry for askin. I suppose I'll just leavve you to the mercy of the sea, then. You knoww, since you obvviously don't wwant my help."

Sollux was surprised not to hear that obnoxious giggling or even see a smug smile cross the seadwellers lips. But he was even more surprised to find that the others speech was even stranger than his own. The seadweller turned to dive away, but Sollux psionically held him in place. The highblood's eyes widened and he turned his head to look at his captor.

Sollux forced himself up onto his elbows in a half sitting position, meeting the highblood's bespectacled eyes.

"Hey, II'm 2orry. II do need your help 2o...Look, thank2 for 2aviing me. II gue22 II'll kii22 your a22 iif iit mean2 you'll help me out."

Eridan's expression darkened.

"Really?"

"No, get me 2ome fuckiing food."

Eridan scoffed.

"Wwhy should I!?"

"Becau2e you're a compa22iionate guy wiith a heart of gold?"

Eridan was taken off guard by this reaction. Then he realized that that's exactly how Feferi would see him if she found out that he was caring for a helpless, marooned, landdweller lowblood that he rescued from the brink of death. He grinned.

"I'll help you, but only because I'm a troll wwho sees fins through to the end."

Sollux seriously doubted that that was a true statement and wondered why he was so easy to convince, but he kept his mouth shut as the seadweller dived into the water and came up with a squirming fish in a matter of minutes. Eridan seamed to have no problem holding onto the writhing creature, not even looking down to make sure he'd know where to grab if it got away. Sollux had to admit, it was pretty impressive how he could do that so effortlessly. Eridan offered the moody troll the fish.

Okay, as cool as that was, Sollux was not expecting to have to eat that thing raw.

"Am II 2uppo2ed to eat thii2?" It was a rhetorical question.

Eridan frowned in annoyance. His motivation for helping the troll was dangling on a thin thread considering he didn't put up with disrespect from lowbloods. After all, this was a charity that was far below him. In fact, it was almost frowned upon. Not by Feferi, though. Right, he had to keep that in mind.

"It's a fish. Evveryone likes fish. Eat it."

After several minutes of bickering over whether or not raw fish was edible (Eridan exasperatedly moving his arms with fish still in hand) a fire was painstakingly made and the fish was skewered alive onto a stick to be cooked over the fire. The two trolls sat in silence as the fish wriggled frantically over the fire for a few moments before going still. An outsider could easily mistake the display for a domestic dispute.

The silence gave Eridan a moment to remembered his reasons for saving the landdweller in the first place. He was still curious enough to tactfully inquire about his origins at the right time, but he would have to keep him alive in order to do that. Sollux's stomach growled desperately and Eridan's heart sank. He mentally kicked himself for getting annoyed with the other troll so quickly. Even if the landdweller was a lowblood, starvation and near death was a better excuse for irritation than the blood hierarchy.

The sea dweller pushed off of the sand with his hands, rose to his feet, and brushed the yellow gains off of his hipster jeans, not meeting the low bloods eyes as he wandered off into the forest. Sollux looked after him, wondered what he was doing, but he didn't inquire about his intentions. His eyes found the fish once more. He was far more interested in filling his ruthless stomach than worrying about this seadweller. Sollux let out a sigh, wondering when he was going to get off of this island.

Eridan remembered reading something about the landdweller diet. From what he could tell, they would eat absolutely anything as long as it was unhealthy. He looked through the flora and grabbed a few things that he thought might be edible, giving each item some consideration before dropping it into the makeshift napsack that was his cape with the corner held in his hand. After gathering a reasonably amount of items, he headed back in the direction of the camp fire. By the time he got back, the landdweller had already picked off the cooked parts of the fish and eaten them eagerly. Eridan titled his head curiously.

"Howw did you do that wwithout burnin yourself?"

"The 2ame way II kept you from leaviing."

"Oh..." Eridan didn't need to inquire any further. He sat down next to the other troll, laying the foodhe had gathered down in front of them.

"Are these any good?" Eridan asked uncertainly.

Sollux looked down at the pile the seadweller had laid down on the sand and quickly realized that this seadweller knew next to nothing about landdwellers. The pile consisted mostly of leaves, twigs, and some brightly colored rocks. There were a few berries strewn about the pile. He let out another sigh.

"Ju2t the2e." He picked out the berries. "Thank2..."

Eridan shifted a bit, pulling his knees up close to him and resting his elbows on them as he looked away.

"It's no problem..." It was.

Sollux looked at the fire and ate his berries, a somber sense of foreboding rising up in his mind. He was going to be depending on a troll that he mixed with about as well as sulfur mixes with chlorine for who know how long. Sollux knew that there would be hell to pay if he didn't get friendly with the seadweller soon. A few moments passed before Sollux decided to speak up.

"Hey 2o...II'm 2ollux Captor."

"Eridan Ampora..."

"Nice to meet you II gue22..." It wasn't.


End file.
